Wesley Barden Finally Has His Own Room, and It Is a Raw Bar on Venice Boulevard

A Venice-born chef, a decade in other people's kitchens, and a counter where the oysters get shucked in front of you.

Chez Mar is open at 12222 Venice Boulevard in Mar Vista, and it is the first restaurant chef Wesley Barden can call his own. He describes it as a SoCal bistro and raw bar, which undersells how long he has been working toward it.

Resy added it to its October Hit List, noting that the action revolves around the raw bar, where oysters are shucked behind a simple counter setup. That is the correct read of the room. The counter is the restaurant.

Where he comes from

Barden is Venice-born, which matters for a chef opening three miles from where he grew up. He spent years at Dudley Market on Dudley Avenue, first as chef de cuisine and later running the kitchen, in the stretch when Jonathan Gold reviewed the place for the Los Angeles Times. He also cooked at Ester's in Santa Monica.

His cooking has always carried classical French training applied to Californian ingredients. In an interview during his Dudley Market years he made the case plainly, arguing that Los Angeles should be the culinary capital of the country because it has the ingredients, the talent and the market for it.

The menu

The published menu runs California through France, with seafood doing most of the work:

• Local Pacific oysters and oyster platters, shucked at the counter.

• Seared local fish with seasonal vegetables and herb butter.

• House-made Parisian gnocchi with sage brown butter and Parmesan.

• Farmers market salads, rotating with what is good.

• A French-leaning wine list, with vinyl on the turntable.

The Infatuation's listing describes it as petite, which is accurate and part of the appeal. This is a small room doing a small number of things.

The block

Chez Mar sits next door to Little Fatty, with the wine bar Mavro as its other neighbor, in a stretch of Venice Boulevard that has quietly become one of the better eating blocks on the Westside. Resy's framing was that Westsiders are now living in a restaurant hot zone, and Mar Vista has been a quiet beneficiary of that.

For a neighborhood that spent years sending people to Venice or Santa Monica for dinner, having a chef of Barden's background open on Venice Boulevard rather than closer to the water is the news.

Visiting

Chez Mar is at 12222 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90066, in Mar Vista, between Grand View and Wasatch, next to Little Fatty.

• Format: SoCal bistro and raw bar. Small room, counter-focused.

• Reservations: bookable through Resy, and advisable given the size.

• Parking: street parking along Venice Boulevard and the residential blocks north, which is more forgiving here than almost anywhere else on the Westside.

• Next door: Mavro for wine on the patio, if you want to extend the evening.

• Updates: posted at chezmar.com and on Instagram.

What we have our eye on: the Parisian gnocchi. A raw bar is the headline, but house-made gnocchi in sage brown butter is the dish that tells you whether the French training is real. FJM will report back after a visit.

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